He slides between the –
oh, no, he sees the screaming shades of red and black; it is all
over now – the water, the oils sliding across her lips like a
slide from beyond, and he is following, following the red depth into
the glitter of false diamonds from fluorescent lighting, the hum of
the funeral parlor, the scent of her skin like violets.

And it is a song, a
song like the rivers flowing and the hail shattering the windows of
the parlor.

He breathes because
there will be no tomorrow when the organ hums out a dulcet, quiet
harmony, a fragment never meant for anything but the parades for the
noblesse. Her corpse was a quiet thing, an item of his career. He had
never known peach eye shadow to look so unhealthy, so he replaced it
with the glimmering tone of snow.

The make up brush felt
like tears in his palm.

"Beautiful…" He
swallowed, smooth voice constricted with landscapes of sorrow, a
tenor velvet crumpled by Death's fingers. He smiles. A wistful
silence from deep inside. He would cry for the black strands of hair
cascading over her sides from within the casket, flowers dulling the
scent of phamaldahide with delicate, triangular petals like rows of
lascivious lips, the curves of her eyelashes, the fragile lengths of
her fingers crossed over her heart as if to give him the penultimate
treasure of; -- but it is over now, lost to obituary ink, and she is
already gone.

Mortuary putty covered
the bullet holes well, a blizzard to disguise those fragile
handprints of red; - the dress, antique, a delicacy of the 19th
century, was like everything in nature, only at its most beautiful
when there was nothing left to subtract from the design, even the
vigor of trembling bridesmaid hands. The sound of exploding gun
powder still echoed beyond the church walls, slipping down the
sidewalks like a lonely voice.

-- It is the task of
the mortuary beautician. His job, and his job alone, his task, his
appointed duty to select the body's outfit, the colors, the
finishing touches of what death would steal from the oil based
cosmetics as the coffin's lid slammed closed.

A tear balanced along
the edge of his eye like the dying light of a firefly as he pressed
his thumb above her lashes, tugging upward, mascara brush in hand,
seeing the whiteness, the blankness. Her gaze had rolled to the side.
Cracks of red shattered that mother of pearl shape. His voice caught,
choked by the aroma of embalming serums if only because she was not
even looking at him anymore, not even in death.

He painted her lashes a
brilliant silver.

"Did it hurt?" His
tongue slipped into the appropriate syllables, her eyes shining like
crispate fragments of a shattered mirror. She shined, she glowed, and
she glimmered like a ripple across a stagnant pond, joining that
stillness in a clatter of bones on harsh, cold, black asphalt, mouth
unmoving. He set the mascara down. Selected a bottle of lip gloss.
Could not meet her gaze, even now. "Not when you were murdered, but
the…"

Shots ringing out,
night falling down, darkness closing in.

"… The fall." The
silence between them was like the space twixt the words 'I thee
wed,' a confession of eternal renunciation, and the emptiness --
masculine fingers curled around her fragile wrist, treasuring it like
the last of a robin's egg, skin a shallow blue beneath the flood of
ivory powder, scratched with red, lined with it. Her arm was
cross-hatched with shards of scrapes, everything about her final
moments dark, dormant, and sleeping in a world of bloodied shades.
"Of course it didn't."

He set her arm down and
painted her lips a Valentine's Day white, letting them glow like
strips of lace; a perfect match for the wedding dress she wore.
Resplendent and flowing and blooming and not; - he would never allow
her to be buried in the jagged corners of unbleached denim, of
violent catastrophe's hideous uniform. She had been killed in blue
jeans.

But she would shine
like a glass seraph when the lid was removed for the wake, every part
of her radiating unmasked, heartbreaking white, screaming it, shining
it, from her eyelashes to gleaming led within the medical examiner's
pan.

The cosmetic bag
clattered as he zipped it up, the mortuary beautician admiring the
white flowers he had slipped around her fingers, every memory of
their love dissolved in these final moments – Can not see the
bride before the wedding, bad luck, ill omens… - because the
alter was a far away shrine, their wedding night dissolved into the
angles of every dark shade. Every drop of red. He would not let a
harmful color touch her, not again, nothing but the purity of
colorless innocence and stranded romance, of white, of silver, of
condensing breath.

Onyx tresses looked
like frosted morning glories beneath the veil.

"No more night, and
no more red…" His hands curled around the handles of the casket,
absorbing the cold metal – a black box, but it would be shut away
from her soon – "… Teach the graveyards an innocent shade."

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